Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State's response. I do not for a minute doubt her commitment to this area. However, when we have situation where the State has made capital investments into respite houses and they are not being used 24-7, around the clock, it is simply inexcusable. Nobody should be able to stand over that.

A mother of an adult child with a range of disabilities wrote:

Robert, as far as I am aware, it is available all weekdays and the weekend arrangement of one weekend each per month for adults and children [It is closed two weekends every month]. Weekdays can be requested but not guaranteed. Weekends cannot be requested due to the high demand and limited availability. It seems to me pot luck if you get one. The high volume of clients along with emergency admittance further complicates things.

It is not fair for people who are providing full-time care that they cannot have certainty, cannot plan and cannot have access to respite. That needs to change now.

The Minister of State mentioned summer camps, which I welcome. I gave the example of a family who urgently needed this type of respite service and were offered 14 days last year. This year, that offer has been cut to seven days. At a time when the Government is increasing funding in this area, that does not seem right.

I speak to senior citizens who are living on their own in rural areas. I met many people who were unaware that they could go to a day-care centre. Nobody is going out to look for these people, engage with them and offer them the service.

Some of these people are lonely. One woman, when I asked her whether she would be interested in going into the Mullingar day-care centre once a week and told her that the bus passes by the head of the road, cried and said that there are some weeks she does not see anybody from the beginning of the week to the end. Why are the officials not out ensuring that people are accessing the services that are there?

I accept the Minister of State is not responsible for all these areas but we need a whole-of-government approach in tackling the issues that have been identified in this report and that I am identifying here. I would ask the Minister of State to bring it back to both her senior Cabinet colleagues and her Minister of State colleagues to see what we can do to make sure that we address the issues that have been highlighted in the report today.

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